Every year millions of people use software for various purposes, e.g., keeping track of personal finances, managing projects, processing medical claims, managing corporate accounting and financial information, filing required documents with the government, tax planning, inventory management, business operation (strategic planning, sales forecasting, distribution channel management, and the like) management and the like. Many software applications are form-based in that the applications offer the ability to perform data entry, edit, and review via multiple forms associated with a common task. Specifically, software applications present multiple forms and collect inputs from a user through a user interface, such as a graphical user interface (GUI). In addition, form-based software applications may produce multiple output forms, or documents, based on the collected input data and certain algorithm embedded in the software application, commonly referred to as a generation engine or a calculation engine.
Using electronic forms, the user can easily amend forms by entering data and subsequently editing the data while maintaining clarity of the input and output. Further, a reviewer can review the prepared forms and annotate review comments and/or make appropriate changes. Form-based applications may also be used in various subject areas, such as project planning, resource management, medicine, or any other subject area where forms provide utility.
Generally, the data-containing fields, or data fields, in each of the forms may relate to various pieces of information and must be prepared (i.e., entered, imported, or derived) carefully. For example, in tax preparation software, a person who marries within a tax year may or may not file a joint tax return with his/her spouse depending on current government regulations. As another example, a regulation passed may allow a taxpayer to claim both state and local tax deductions for sales or income tax. In addition, the regulation may specify that tax for motor vehicles may be added to the deduction, but only at a general sales tax rate. To comply with the regulations passed by all governing bodies, the person entering the data must be aware of up-to-date regulations. In other examples, the collection of user inputs, or data entry, may not be performed by a person, e.g., the data may be imported from another software application. For example, an inventory management software application may import data from a point of sale software. In another example, corporate tax preparation software may import data from an accounting software application of a separate financial institution.
Users of software applications, e.g., financial software, must be able to trust the quality of the data source behind the multiple forms presented by the software. Regardless of whether the data fields contain data inputted directly or derived from other data, a reviewer must have a means of determining the original data source, or sources, and assessing a level of trust, i.e., trust level, before the reviewer can determine the validity (e.g., correctness, exactness, accuracy, precision, trustworthiness, error or mistake-free, conformity to a standard or model, or according to other suitable measure of being valid) of the final output document. Maintaining a standard measure of quality is important when providing trusted data. Evaluating the quality of data and trusting the data source requires a system of quality control that often involves a multi-stage evaluation process to determine whether data from a source A, e.g., a temporary employee performing data entry, is any more or less valid than data automatically retrieved from another source B, e.g., a bank.